WINDOW ROCK - Elderly Navajos who were promised new homes in the Hopi Partition Lands will have to keep waiting, thanks to a clash in Window Rock over funding to complete the homes.

The Navajo-Hopi Land Commission voted June 22 to allocate money from the Navajo Rehabilitation Trust Fund to complete or repair 48 homes, which were promised to people living on Hopi Partition Lands but never completed properly.

But on Aug. 1 the commission, faced with opposition from the Government Services Committee, reversed its earlier vote and decided to take a new approach.

Roman Bitsuie, director of the land commission office, said Wednesday he has been asked to collect more information on project costs and to research alternative sources of funding.

The commission took the action in hopes of heading off a move by the Government Services Committee to freeze spending from the rehabilitation trust fund, Bitsuie explained.

“The committee was talking about drafting legislation to put a moratorium on the fund and the commission said, ‘We don’t want that, so we need to take care of (the homes) separately,’” Bitsuie said.

The Government Services Committee has oversight authority over the executive branch, which includes the land commission.

On July 26, the Government Services Committee challenged the commission’s decision to take money from the rehabilitation trust fund for the HPL homes. Council delegates on the committee contended the commission had mismanaged the project from the start, and had ignored reforms needed to assure that it would not do so again.

The committee questioned Bitsuie and President Joe Shirley Jr. extensively about the commission’s vote to allocate more for the homes.

Committee members informed Shirley and Bitsuie that they were considering legislation that would place a moratorium on the use of money from the rehabilitation trust fund.

Committee member Leonard Teller (Lukachukai/Tsaile/Wheatfields), who planned to sponsor the funding freeze, said the committee’s opposition to using the trust fund is based on a January 2005 auditor general’s report.

Teller said the audit found that the commission office has mismanaged the trust fund. “Shoddy” construction was ignored and $1.5 million is unaccounted for, he said. The audit recommended that sanctions be imposed on the Navajo-Hopi Land Commission Office.

“It was drastic,” Teller said of the findings.

George Hardeen, Shirley’s spokesman, said last week that Shirley was meeting with Bitsuie, who had prepared responses to all the committee’s questions. The Government Services Committee set an Aug. 9 meeting to hear from Bitsuie.

The meeting never took place because the commission, in the meantime, rescinded its June 22 vote to fund further work on the homes.

In an effort to address the committee’s concerns, the commission decided to begin again. It will collect quotes on project costs from three contractors before voting again to allocate monies to complete the homes, Bitsuie said.

The new cost information should provide the commission with a solid basis for the allocation, he said. It then plans to take a new vote to allocate monies, and to proceed from there under standard tribal procurement rules.

“The commission also has asked me to identify alternative sources of funding besides the rehabilitation trust fund,” Bitsuie said in reference to the possibility that the watchdog committee could, if dissatisfied, still move to freeze that funding source.

The land commission’s June action appeared to resolve a longstanding injustice against elders living in the HPL area, who had accepted the promise of new housing in return for signing away their claims to ancestral lands now controlled by the Hopi Tribe.

Bitsuie also said the project now involves 47, not 48, homes, because one of the homes has been completed to the owner’s satisfaction with assistance from the Hopi Tribe.

The Government Services Committee had the commission in the hot seat because of findings in the January 2005 performance audit. The audit said poor management of the HPL housing program, first identified four years ago, never has been corrected.

Committee members complained that now the commission was proposing to pour more money into the HPL homes without having a realistic idea of how much it would cost to do the job right.

According to a November 2001 audit – two years before Shirley took office – responsibility for building the homes was assigned in 1996 to the Navajo Housing Services Department under the Division of Community Development.

The Navajo-Hopi Land Commission approved the use of $1.5 million from the rehabilitation trust fund to pay for the homes.

Five years later, the 2001 audit concluded that project management was inadequate, resulting in the failure to complete the homes. The audit found “minimal effort” by the commission office to obtain the resources to complete the homes.

“Navajo Housing Services Department labor costs and construction status records are unreliable. Costs of labor are incomplete and the percentage-of-completion records have conflicting data,” the audit reported.

The 2001 audit noted that the council’s Budget & Finance Committee had approved a corrective action plan in January 2001, to be carried out by the commission office.

The audit recommended hiring a housing inspector/planner by July 23, 2001, to review the 48 home documents, conduct inspections of all homes, and complete an inventory of construction materials on site.

Shirley took office in January 2003, and appointed Bitsuie to head the commission office.

The January 2005 audit found that inspections of the homes had been made but that they lacked reliable estimates to finish the homes. In addition, the new audit faulted current administrators for not carrying out reforms set forth in the 2001 audit.

“Navajo-Hopi Land Commission Office has no justification for not fully implementing its corrective action plan to resolve the findings. Therefore, we recommend that sanctions be imposed on the Navajo-Hopi Land Commission Office,” the 2005 audit said.

The Budget & Finance Committee acted earlier this summer to levy the sanctions, which include withholding 20 percent of the commission’s program budget and the director’s salary until the audit recommendations are put in place.

Originally published in The Navajo Times August 11, 2005